


Back in the Game

by Goldmonger



Category: Iron Fist (TV), Luke Cage (TV), The Defenders (Marvel TV)
Genre: Gen, Humor, angst? i don't know her, avengers name drop, danny really needs friends guys, defenders aftershock, maybe a little
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-19
Updated: 2017-08-19
Packaged: 2018-12-17 12:08:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,610
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11851272
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Goldmonger/pseuds/Goldmonger
Summary: 'Heroes Pro Bono' just isn't that catchy.





	Back in the Game

**Author's Note:**

> This is me getting my foot in the door before the Power Man & Iron Fist miniseries we all deserve. Also I'm a sucker for beautiful friendships that start with one person being annoyed by the other until it becomes affection, sue me

The crunching was loud enough that after a while, it could have been coming from inside his own head. Luke remembered what it felt like to have your skull cracked against a pavement, and this was somehow worse.

“Man, seriously,” he said to Danny, who was sprawled on Claire’s couch with his arm dangling over its side into a bag of chips, “knock it off.”

“I’m recharging my -,”

“You can recharge your cheese with something quieter,” he grumbled, shaking the newspaper out flat. “I’m working on something here.”

“I’m going to stop correcting you one of these days,” retorted Danny, folding up the bag. “And then you’ll be asking me to summon my _cheese_ in front of some bad guy, and who’ll look like the dork then?”

“You. The answer is always you.”

Danny hefted himself off the couch with a groan and many popping joints, stretching and yawning like a man forty years his senior. He’d taken to visiting Luke and Claire at their apartment over the past few weeks, dropping in unannounced and often heralding long-winded monologues about how Colleen’s current sabbatical to Japan was his own personal hell. He stopped the theatrics after Claire started hitting him with magazines, punctuating each belt with some declaration of Colleen’s superior independence. Then he started eating all their ice cream, and leaving through the window, with the excuse that it was the quickest way out, and justice called. It was a weird relationship that Luke didn’t know what to do with, which was fitting since Danny was a weirdo that he didn’t know what to do with.

 “I wish you’d just let me pay your bills,” said Danny solemnly. “Claire won’t say it, but she’d be relieved.”

“I’m not taking your money,” Luke said, sighing. It had been a difficult decision, and in many people’s eyes, most likely a moronic one, but accepting the charity of a billionaire was not something that sat right with him. He’d always pulled himself up by his own bootstraps, and he would again. “I’m not a man that indulges his own pride often, but I won’t budge on this one.” He circled another vacancy advertised in the paper, something related to catering. Jesus.

Danny shrugged, and went into the kitchenette, going about fixing himself a sandwich. “I could hire you, then.”

“As what? Security for a bunch of white collar douchebags? No thanks.”

“As my personal secretary,” Danny grinned, smothering a slice of bread in peanut butter. “You could forward calls to me and pick up my dry-cleaning.”

“I could throw you into the laundry chute down the hall,” said Luke dryly. “I could also do that.”

“Kidding.” Danny picked up a jar of jam and inspected it with too much interest for it to be casual. “It’s – uh, it’s not me, is it?”

Luke looked up in confusion, assuming Danny had spiralled off into another conversation topic apropos of nothing – he did that often, like he felt compelled to eructate whatever crossed his mind in the moment, no subject too personal or mundane. It was a trait that quickly became exhausting, though Luke wasn’t sure Danny was aware he was even doing it.

“What?”

Danny cleared his throat, putting down the jar and tacitly avoiding Luke’s eyes. “It’s not me, right? Like, would you accept a bunch of money from Tony Stark?”

Luke laughed – he couldn’t help it. “If Tony Stark came to me with a roll of hundreds for no apparent reason I think I’d have bigger problems, man.”

Danny smiled awkwardly, returning his attention to a sandwich that was being crushed under the weight of its own filling. “He probably wouldn’t give it to you in cash. A wire transfer to your own bank in Switzerland or something. Maybe an antique car.”

“Now you’re talking.” Luke marked another opening for a bartender with his highlighter. “I appreciate the offer, but I have to do this myself. It’s tough getting back out there for an ex-con, but Claire says it won’t take long for someplace in Harlem to take me on. I just have to wear my ‘hero’ face in interviews.”

“Show me your hero face.”

Luke rolled his eyes, scouring the paper again.

“ _That’s_ not very heroic.”

Luke turned and flashed him a mixture of blue steel and the clown that makes all the younger kids cry at a Chuck E. Cheese birthday party, and Danny snorted so hard he choked on his sandwich.

“Like I said, a work in progress.”

“Work harder,” Danny said, between coughs.

“Who’s eating the contents of whose cupboards again? Pipe down.”

“They’re gluten-free, they’re not even yours,” exclaimed Danny helplessly. “Where is Claire, anyway?” he asked, returning to slump on the couch with the jar of peanut butter and a spoon cradled in the crook of his arm, the TV blaring some infomercial that dyed his face pale blue. “Her shift was over half an hour ago.”

“Downtown at Josie’s, with Karen Page and that guy Foggy,” said Luke, feeling something heavy slide into his gut. “It’s… helpful, for her, to talk with them sometimes.”

Danny nodded soberly, and they both descended into a grim silence, moments of private reflection that were growing longer and longer. Luke thought that at some point they would all just stop speaking, stunned into a stupor by the merest suggestion that Matt Murdock had once existed.

Danny, somehow, was still chewing when Luke finished his preliminary job search, closing the paper with its long list of opportunities coloured luminescent yellow. He leaned back, the chair creaking ominously as he stretched out his legs.

“The hard part starts tomorrow,” he announced, hauling himself to his feet and striding past Danny to make some bad coffee. “Going around and pleading for the chance to scrub dishes.”

“That’s not a great use of your abilities,” said Danny pensively, licking the spoon and turning off the television, which had been playing on mute for an hour now anyway. “I have an idea about all of this, actually.”

“Awesome. Please stop telling me about your ideas, they generally end up getting you or me or a lot of angry goons beat to hell.”

The puerile smirk inching up Danny’s cheeks was enough to make Luke pick up a cushion and pelt him with it, barely resisting sending it through his face and the wall behind him. Mostly for the sake of the wall. Claire would kill him.

Danny easily batted the cushion aside, jumping up with a mysterious fervour. “Just give me a chance.”

“No. It’s going to be stupid, I can tell from your face.”

Danny sidled up to the counter where he was putting together coffee, his hands clasped together. “You like helping people, right? Well, this is sort of like that. Not sort of. It is that. Except -,”

Luke turned the glare he had adopted from Jessica on him, but it only made him quail for a second.

“Wait for it - except you charge for your services!”

“I’m not even going to dignify that with a response.” He sat on the couch that had just been abandoned, reaching for the remote, but Danny swiped it from the armrest before he could get to it. The glare, it seemed, had stopped working entirely.

“No, listen. It won’t be like you’re holding off on using your powers to help until someone pays you – it’ll be more like PI work. Like Jessica.”

“I can’t be a private investigator,” said Luke irritably. “I don’t have a camera. Besides, just because I can land a decent punch doesn’t mean I want to name and shame adulterers for a living. I can’t be chill about stuff like that.”

Danny sat beside him, practically glowing with excitement. Not literally, though, thank the lord.

“Not that. Bigger game. Think Fisk, Gao, any crime boss who thinks the time is ripe to take the place of either of them -,”

“And who would pay me?”

Danny bit his lip. “Concerned citizens?”

“You’re killing me. Please let me watch _Scandal_ in peace.”

“I can start us off, get us headquarters. Hogarth needs something to occupy her weekends, she could probably secure us a few clients.”

Luke turned fully to pin him with an accusatory stare. “Us?”

“Well – yeah.” Danny fidgeted, self-conscious. “We could be partners, like in a law firm. Except we don’t just take cases, we bust heads.” He grinned.

“Do you hear yourself when you talk?” Luke could feel genuine apprehension rising inside him, fear and pragmatism twisted like a vine around the barest sliver of hope that was starting to burn a hole in his chest. He’d never make somebody write a check after saving them from a burning building, he wasn’t that far gone. But he knew powerful people with enemies, and many of them with ill intent…

Danny was still there, quixotically enthusiastic as always. It was a seriously stupid idea, but those seemed to be catching.

“What if I promise to only take money from corporate assholes?” Danny pressed. “And you’ll get your own office. And we don’t have to wear costumes.” He gave Luke a gentle smack on the knee. “Unless you’re into that.”

It was _such_ a stupid idea.

“If I do this, will you stop eating our food?”

Danny’s eyes twinkled in the low lamplight, and Luke tried to convince himself that the roiling in his stomach was anxiety, not excitement. The former would mean he still had a semblance of common sense; the latter indicated he was about to willingly stride into a crap ton of trouble. With a living weapon at his side.

Yep, Claire was definitely going to kill him.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for all your comments! I cry


End file.
